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Tuesday, May 19, 2015

The armor rule in the 5th edition of D&D is by far my favorite of any edition of D&D. Though there is one system that I can't help but love. The Palladium armor rules grew from house rules of older editions of D&D. I want to do the reverse and see how I would handle a Palladium style system within the frame of D&D 5E.

I want to keep this system very simple so to be upfront about this. I'm going for the feel, while still keeping things simple. I have no interest in realism or direct porting from one system to the next. I'm also doing my best not to throw off the math. It will add more granularity to armor, Which is not everyone's cup of tea. This is totally untested, for now. So here we go.

Armor now has its own hit point pools.
All light armor has a base of 25hp.
All medium armor has a base of 40hp.
All heavy armor has a base of 50hp.
Obviously none standard materials could add or subtract from the base pool of hit points.For example a breast plate made from bone might have only 30hp, While one made from the Dwarven great forge could have 50 or more hit points.

Armor has an AR rating. AR is equal to original AC of the armor plus any Dex bonus it originally had.

Base to AC is now 5 + Dex bonus.

So for example:
Athen the bard has a Dex bonus of +2 and is wearing leather armor. His armor would be:
Leather armor, AC 7, AR 13, 25hp.

Any roll of the AC or lower is a total miss. A roll greater than AC but less that AR is a hit to the armor, damage is rolled and deducted from the armors HP. Any roll greater than AR is a hit to the character directly and deducts from the characters HP as normal.

Once armor looses its last hit point it is useless and must be repaired or replaced. And the player looses the AR value all together. I'm sure GMs could allow armoring rolls to repair armor allowing armor to regain some or all of its hitpoints back.

This can also add granularity to well crafted items. For example maybe Dwarven armor has more hit points. While Elven steel is so light it adds more to base AC. And Human Fine craft adds to AR bonus.

I've been inspired by a great many games. Some leave their mark but for whatever reason fade from my table. Some I get an idea or two from but don't really care for some other aspect of the game. I've done a few house rules posts here and there for C&C. But I think its time I put more into them. make some real hacks for C&C. One reason I haven't is because Troll lord games already did a lot of that in the Castle keepers guide. They tore apart the Siege engine and put it back together again in different ways. They did such an amazing job of it I hate to reinvent the wheel so to speak. At some point I will do just that, But instead of hashing over already covered ground I will propose a few alternate resolution methods to replace the Siege engine.

I've been running a bit of 5E D&D and find a few of its components interesting.With both C&C and 5E being so modular I think a few of these components could easily be used in C&C. So here they are, C&C style.

BOON: This is a mechanic by which players are reworded for good role-playing. They gain a boon as a reward that can be spent at a later time to give themselves and one time re-roll choosing the best of the two rolls. Players can not stock pile boons, they either have a boon or they don't. Players may give other players their boon if they feel the player does something truly 'inspiring'.

Bonus/Penalty roll: Any time a player has a bonus or penalty to a roll +/-3 or greater the GM can call for Bonus or penalty roll instead of imposing the bonus/penalty. Instead the roll is treated as a re-roll. the player re-rolls the dice. If the roll was a penalty roll the player must keep the lower of the two rolls. If the roll was a bonus roll he keeps the greater of the two rolls.

Monday, May 18, 2015

I'm gearing up for a sci fi one shot using the material from both The Strange and Numenera.

The plot and location is going to be a space station in the far future besieged by an alien race. Think the movie Aliens mixed with Die hard.

I will be using the types from The Strange. But allow decriptors from either game.

Players can choose just about any focus and explain it as trainning, tech, alien biology, or psionics.

For example three different characters could all have 'Needs no weapon' focus. One might be an alien race whos biology make them a natural hunter/warrior. The other could be cybernetically enhanced. And the third is a soldier who is trained in martial arts.

I'm really working on an even more basic version of 5th edition of Dungeons and Dragons. The free basic rules are great, or even a great start. One option I discussed in my proficiency hack was applying proficiency to abilities rather than skills. I really like this option. But what about another option.

The other day I was thinking about how well the three saves from previous editions of D&D worked. It was easy to tell which of the three categories any one save would fall under. What if those three were very broad skill groups? Physical, Social, and Mental.

So then I have to ask, Is it just one category that the character is proficient? or two? How about full proficiency in one, half on a second, and none on the third. I'm going to give this a try. Maybe once I do I'll come back and post a few pregens made this way.